The deaths of children are a cause for misery, and new research suggests one of the gravest perils comes in the form of falsified and substandard drugs for treating malaria, pneumonia and other diseases. Hundreds of thousands of children each year are dying due to a surge of poor-quality or outright fake medicines, the report says.

“We’re talking about 300,000 — at least — children who have died because of murder-by-alleged-medicines distributed by criminals,” said Dr. Joel Breman, a co-author of the report and senior scientific adviser emeritus at the Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health.

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The World Health Organization has defined three types of falsified and substandard medical products.

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“Falsified medical products” deliberately misrepresent their identity, composition or source. “Substandard medical products” are regulated drugs that somehow fail to meet quality standards or specifications — for example, they have less than needed amounts of an active pharmaceutical ingredients. “Unregistered or unlicensed medical products” are untested and unapproved drugs.